This invention relates to an athletic shoe for running disciplines and a process for providing information and/or for exchanging information concerning moving sequences in running disciplines using a sensor provided in the sole of the shoe and emitting a signal in response to each step taken by the wearer and a transmitter for transmitting the signal to a remote receiver.
In sports where running long distances, medium distances or even short distances make special demands on the athlete, the athletes' training is often, to a considerable extent, aimed at the moving sequences of the limbs, especially those of the legs. For this purpose, the athlete himself or a trainer often set up certain training programs. Of special significance are, in this case, the possibilities of monitoring the training sequence and/or the achieved results. These should be recorded and compared with previous data or desired data and/or analyzed in order to recognize the training condition or the degree of training or to be able to reliably assess it in order to draw conclusions concerning further training phases or sequences and possibly also different training phases or sequences.
In published U.K. patent application No. 2,121,219 and corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 4,466,204, an electronic music pace and distance counting shoe is disclosed wherein an electronic circuit device is disposed in a shoe sole that, upon walking, jogging or running, provides a walking speed rate, music beat, beat sound, etc. Additionally, a microcomputer counts the number of steps and measures the approximate distance that the wearer has walked, jogged or run based upon a stored value that has been preset with a normal length of stride of a walker, runner or jogger. However, since stride lengths vary greatly from individual to individual, due to such factors as size and conditioning, and even with respect to a given individual over the duration of a given training session or race, due to such factors as fatigue and terrain, such a single sensor system that functions based on a preset "normal" stride length cannot provide accurate information concerning stride length and running speed, especially for various phases or sequences involving different combinations of stride length and pace. Furthermore, this known shoe is not designed to advise the wearer if his program of running/jogging/walking is varying, at a given point in time, from a predetermined program set up for the athlete or how he must change in order to achieve the desired values. Other electronic step counting shoes are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,402,147 and International application No. PCT/GB82/00119 (International Publication No. WO82/03753) and they possess similar deficiencies.
In the skiing sport, it is known to mount a receiver and a speaker or earphone in the skier's helmet through which the athlete during training or competition can receive the instructions of the trainer. However, this information is based exclusively on the trainer's intuition and not on specific measured results and especially does not take into account the athlete's instantaneous physical condition. Such information may, therefore, also have very disadvantageous consequences for the athlete, such as overexertion or premature exhaustion. With the application of the invention, these disadvantages may be avoided completely.